The need for effective therapeutic treatment of patients has resulted in the development of a variety of pharmaceutical formulation delivery techniques. One traditional technique involves the oral delivery of a pharmaceutical formulation in the form of a pill, capsule, elixir, or the like. However, oral delivery can in some cases be undesirable. For example, many pharmaceutical formulations may be degraded in the digestive tract before they can be effectively absorbed by the body. Inhaleable drug delivery, where an aerosolized pharmaceutical formulation is orally or nasally inhaled by a patient to deliver the formulation to the patient's respiratory tract, has proven to be a particularly effective and/or desirable alternative. For example, in one inhalation technique, a pharmaceutical formulation is delivered deep within a patient's lungs where it may be absorbed into the blood stream. Many types of inhalation devices exist including devices that aerosolize a dry powder, devices comprising a pharmaceutical formulation stored in or with an inhaleable propellant, devices which use a compressed gas to aerosolize a liquid pharmaceutical formulation, and similar devices.
In one dry powder aerosolization technique, a capsule containing an inhaleable dry powder is loaded into a chamber in an aerosolization device. Within the chamber, the dry powder is at least partially emptied and dispersed to aerosolize the dry powder so that it may be inhaled by a patient. However, in conventional devices, the manner of accessing the chamber may often lead to device inconsistencies and/or failures. Also, the dry powder in the cavity can cause the access mechanism to become less effective at efficiently opening and closing.
Therefore, it is desirable to improve the manner of accessing an aerosolization device chamber. It is further desirable to access the chamber in a manner that reduces device inconsistencies and/or failures. It is still further desirable to access the cavity so that debris in the cavity will have reduced adverse affects on the functioning of the device.